


the fire is coming

by weatheredlaw



Series: still with hearts beating [5]
Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross Country, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Domestic Bliss, F/M, Falling In Love, Not Canon Compliant, Travel, Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-15
Updated: 2013-10-15
Packaged: 2017-12-29 12:44:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1005609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day, just like that, like nothing had ever happened between them -- Karla is gone. Lester knows his glory days are about to be cut short. Not that he cares, not anymore. The best parts of all this were her, and now she’s gone. She’s left him, and she’s left him with nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. i think we should run

One day, just like that, like nothing had ever happened between them -- Karla is gone. 

Osborn is apathetic about the entire situation. His gears are already churning and Lester knows his glory days are about to be cut short. Not that he cares, not anymore. The best parts of all this were her, and now she’s gone. She’s left him, and she’s left him with nothing. 

He puts his fist through his bathroom mirror and watches the cuts on his hand heal in his reflection.

It’s the only thing that seems to be working. 

 

 

 

Lester figures, if everyone else is leaving, then so is he. There’s nothing to stop him. He’s gotten good at hiding, keeping everything tucked away and secret, including himself. So he leaves the Hawkeye uniform behind, packs up his own bow and arrows, and goes. 

He thinks he’s just going to settle back into the city, but it’s crawling with memories and things he doesn’t want to look in the face. In another world, he stays, maybe, and he knows staying means he’s a dead man, because he’s always been just a step ahead of it. 

And he figures if Karla can make herself disappear, then it couldn’t be so hard for him.

So he goes. 

 

 

 

To his credit, Lester makes it to Pittsburgh before he dreams about her. And it’s a good dream, too. He’s back at the tower, and she’s sitting in his room, waiting for him, legs crossed, completely naked. They fuck slow, skin on skin, slick with sweat. Karla begs for him, her voice trembling. Lester doesn’t have to touch her, she just _comes_ , just arches her back and snaps up, a silent scream on her lips. 

He wakes up hard as a rock, stumbling into the bathroom to jack off in the shower. When he gets out, he looks in the mirror, cringes at the six o’clock shadow growing across his face, the beginnings of hair starting to grow over his head. He keeps the hair, shaves his face, and packs up, checking out before breakfast. 

Sometimes he’s looking for her, spotting blondes from across the street, women with that certain curve, that low laugh -- the one for his stupid jokes, for his scowls and messes. 

Sometimes he brings a girl back to his room. Never a blonde. 

He’s thinking about swearing off them. 

 

 

 

He’s in St. Louis when he _swears_ he sees her. It’s her, he fucking knows it is. 

Maybe he does. He blinks, wonders if it’s her or if he just wants it to be her. Realizes with a jolt he _needs_ it to be her. Realizes with a twist in his stomach that he hates that he needs this. 

“Karla--” The woman turns around when he puts his hand on her shoulder and Lester pulls back, shaking his head. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I thought you were...sorry.” He turns and disappears into a cafe, ordering a coffee and sitting outside for the rest of the day. 

The next time he leaves, he doesn’t stop until he hits the coast.

 

 

 

Another dream, this one not as good as the first. In his dream she tells him she’s leaving and she tells him why she doesn’t want him with her, why she couldn’t tell him. The reasons aren’t good, and Lester wakes up angry and alone. His hair is unruly, impossible to keep down, so he doesn’t bother. 

The guys at his new job tell him in rapid succession that he looks like hell, and he takes it, does his work and accepts that, without an answer, without really knowing why she left, he might never be okay again.

Never thought he’d get hung up on a _woman_ this way. Not enough to...no.

No, he doesn’t love Karla.

He doesn’t love her. He doesn’t know how.

Not without her. 

 

 

 

So maybe he’s constructed an emotion. He’s set up the scaffolding, set up the framework, is hanging from the edge of it, a suicide jumper on the edge of love. Adoration. Infatuation.

No, he should call it what it is, he decides. Even if it’s foreign, even if he’s never felt it like this before. He should name it, and name it proper. 

He dreams that he tells her. Every night he dreams he tells her. Sometimes she loves him back, and they are single, writhing creature on his bed. Sometimes she isn’t real. Sometimes she doesn’t say anything. Sometimes she hates him, sometimes she cuts him open and lets him bleed. 

Either way, he wakes up hard, frustrated.

Wakes up alone. 

He doesn’t know how to love Karla when he’s _without_ Karla.

And then, in a single moment, he isn’t. 

He’s leaving work at the auto shop, thinking about dinner, when this guy, Ricky, total fuck up -- and Lester’s a fuck up, so he knows a piece of work when he sees one -- jabs him with his elbow, says something like, “Check out them legs,” and Lester looks up and sees her, silhouetted against the sunset, right next to the beach. 

It’d be perfect if he didn’t want to fucking drown her. 

He practically hears Ricky’s jaw hit the pavement, hears some of the other guys cat calling as he walks right up to her. And true to who she is, Karla doesn’t look away, has her chin tipped back defiantly, daring him to look down. He doesn’t. 

“Where have you been?”

She smirks. He can’t decide what he wants to do more, kiss her or kill her. 

He goes with the first one, and he doesn’t regret it. 

 

 

 

“I had dreams about you,” she murmurs, sighing against his neck. Lester looks at her. 

“Like what?”

“I was always looking, never finding. Always in the same place.” She looks out his open window where they can both hear the waves crashing on the shore. “Always on the ocean.” She rolls a condom over him and Lester pushes in with a groan. Karla runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “You grew your hair out.”

Lester moans, “ _Jesus_ , woman.”

“I love it.” She kisses his temple, hitching her legs up. “Now come on, baby, fuck me right.” Lester hooks her legs over his shoulders and thrusts in earnest, going at it slow and hard, watching her face every time he moves. Karla stares up at him, her mouth open and moaning, head tipped back, like everything is spilling out. She gets her legs down, pushing him up and sitting on his dick, looking down as they move together.

They are a single, writhing creature on his bed. 

Illuminated by the sunset, their ugliness bared between them like teeth. They are flawed, brutal, dangerous when they’re apart, explosive when they’re together. But here, in the aftermath of it all, is the only place where he can rest. He collapses onto the other side of the bed, spent, sweating, still touching, he can’t stop touching. And Karla moans whenever he does, doesn’t matter where. Like she’s starved for it. 

Lester knows he is. He knows it’s been months since he was touched the way she touches him. No one satisfies him like she does. No one makes him feel the way she does. If they’ve proved anything to one another since that first time, shut in the bathroom of the bar, it’s that they are too much for everyone else and just enough for one another.

“Lester, I--”

“Don’t.” He stares back at her. “We can’t. We can’t say it.

Karla frowns. “Why not?” Lester presses his forehead against hers, breathing in her scent, their scent, the way they breathe and feel and _are_ when they’re together. “You’re scared,” she says and Lester would be angry if it was an accusation, but it’s really just the truth. He is _terrified_. Of what it means. Of what it makes them. Of what it makes him. 

“We _can’t_ , we’re not those people--”

Karla sits up, breaking contact with him and Lester regrets that, wants to say, _no, no I’m sorry, come back let me try that again_. Instead he just stares. “I love you,” she says, and there’s no break in her voice, nothing to tell him she might be lying. “Lester, I’m in love with you. I don’t give a shit that we’re not _those people_.” She smiles. “I know what kind of people we are.” She pulls him into her arms, stroking her fingers through his hair. He leans against her, closing his eyes. The sun is finally going down, night swallowing his tiny apartment, swallowing them both. He falls asleep reluctantly, understanding full well that she could be gone in the morning.

 

 

 

She isn’t. She’s sitting on his balcony, smoking a cigarette. Lester makes a face when he comes out. “I want to punch people a lot. Every time I feel like it, I light up,” she explains.

“That’s disgusting.”

“Thank you, Board of Health.” She puts it out on the railing and flicks it into the street. “Fine. I won’t smoke. What should I do instead?” 

“Punch someone.”

“ _Lester_.”

“Fuck, I don’t know, Karla.” He hands her a cup of coffee and leans against the railing. “Ever since…” He shakes his head. Fucking _feelings_ conversation. Jesus. “I don’t want to go back to New York.”

“LA’s a good place for a guy like you.”

“What’s that mean?”

Karla laughs. “We both know you have a specific skill set, Lester.”

“I rebuilt a fucking engine yesterday, so don’t even talk to me about skill sets.” She laughs again and this time, he laughs along with her, coming over to cup her chin in his hand. 

She closes her eyes, tipping her head against his hand. “You told me you thought we were always this way.” She opens her eyes, looking straight back at him. He hates when she does that, as much as he loves it. Lester nods. “You think we’ll always be this way?” 

“Probably. At least close to it, anyway.” He finishes his coffee, his hand migrating down to her neck, thumb massaging at the base of her skull, digging gently into soft flesh. She moans, just a bit, leaning against his leg. 

They abandon their coffee cups on the balcony, going inside to strip each other down. Karla rolls him over, presses her lips everywhere she can, every dip and corner that she fits into, that her tongue rolls over, can roll over. She makes him crazy under her hands, until he’s bucking into her palm, so close to begging and he doesn’t beg, he _never_ begs and here he is, eyes wide and staring back as she takes him into her mouth, taking him to the root. Lester moans, lifting his hips off the bed, fucking into her mouth. She hums around him, swallows until he’s so close, she knows he’s close. She rolls the condom over his dick and guides him into her, throwing her hands out to brace herself on his chest.

“ _Lester--_ ” 

He murmurs, “I could be better for you.” 

It’s as close as he can get to _I love you._ And she knows. She knows everything.


	2. Epilogue: or, unlike Ikea furniture, burgeoning love between villains does not come with instructions.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the only way they know how to say it. 
> 
> _I love you,_ she always says.
> 
>  _I can't do this without you,_ he always answers.

Lester doesn’t ask her to stay in LA with him, but Karla knows. It was supposed to happen this way, she thinks. And so this is the way it’s happened. They settle into a strange routine in their now shared apartment. Her things mix with his. His space mixes with hers. 

When they fight it’s terrible. No, that isn’t the right word. Karla doesn’t know a word violent enough for the way they fight. They know each others’ weaknesses, their strengths, how to dig under skin and burrow in, poison what they work so hard every day to make.

And then, just like that, they’re on the beach, they’re cooking dinner, they’re in bed, they’re making love, they’re fucking, they’re building fucking Ikea furniture.

“This is dumb.”

“We need a kitchen table.” Lester groans, fiddling with the screw driver for ten more minutes before Karla takes it from him and starts doing it himself.

“That’s kind of hot.” 

“I don’t want to fuck right now.”

He grins against the back of her neck and she drops the screwdriver, falling on top of him in the kitchen floor.

 

 

 

It isn’t easy, not by any stretch of the imagination. Sometimes he comes home, breathing deep, and presses himself against her in bed, head against her stomach. Karla cards her fingers through his hair, makes him talk her through it. The desire for them both to retreat into who they’ve been for so long is a constant pull. And it’s never going to go away. She had to pull Lester out of a bar fight three weekends ago, drag him away and talk him down. He had blood on his knuckles and glass in his palms. 

And he does the same for her. He talks her down from the proverbial rooftop sometimes. When she feels like the only answer is to take off, hide herself in space, between stars and nothing. He takes her hands and tells her if he can do this, if _he_ can push back, then she can do it even better. 

It’s the only way he knows how to tell her he loves her. 

He told her once he thought they’d always been this way. And he’d told her they could try to be different. Karla doesn’t think they could do this without each other. And she knows he thinks the same thing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's over, it's done. Five stories about two completely insane villains. I hope you've enjoyed this bit of woobification and canon divergence. I have zero apologies to make, but I would like to thank Ari (mariachillin), for being responsible for fueling these raving pieces of fiction. Honestly couldn't have done it without you. Wish I could gift an entire series to you, but this will have to do. I mean, it's basically for you and me, friend. <3


End file.
